Whew! After all that chaos and uncertainty, Teela is finally here.
I’ll forgo the tempting-but-predictable “sausage fest” jokes about the current state of Masters of the Universe Classics and simply say that Teela, the line’s first female figure, is a welcome addition.
The story of Teela’s creation for the original 1980s MOTU line, and how that conception was later woven into the various continuities, is pretty damned complicated. The original sketch of the character we know as Teela was called simply a “female warrior.” Since it was known even in those earliest stages that MOTU would re-use a lot of parts between figures, there was also a sketch of a character called the Sorceress, who would use the same basic body as the female warrior but have a snake-themed helmet and staff.
From here the story gets murky, but somehow the design labeled “Sorceress” got labeled “Teela” on the toys themselves, but the early mini-comics mixed up Teela and the Sorceress all the time (sometimes referred to as the Goddess, or even the Warrior-Goddess). In one mini-comic she was actually colored green.
The cartoon series put an end to it all, with the figure’s design (sans snake armor and staff) being called Teela, captain of the king’s guard, and the Sorceress having a completely different design. But the “Green Goddess” idea continues on, and we’re even getting a translucent repaint of the character (with a new-tooled staff) in December. (more…)
